


I Ain't Got No Use For Your Red Apple Juice

by ladivvinatravestia



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: Additional Warnings in Author's Notes, Fake/Pretend Relationship, M/M, Miscommunication, Past Relationship(s), Pre-Relationship, bullying and teasing, caught in a snowstorm, everyone is poly because witchers, two bros chillin' in a hot tub
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-09
Updated: 2020-05-09
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:21:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24095764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladivvinatravestia/pseuds/ladivvinatravestia
Summary: Geralt and Jaskier pretend to date; get caught in a snowstorm; and chill in a hot tub less than five feet apart; but somehow manage not to sleep together before the end of the fic.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 8
Kudos: 91





	I Ain't Got No Use For Your Red Apple Juice

**Author's Note:**

> I’m taking some liberties with Toussaint’s political affiliations, and I’m making up some settlements not on the game map.
> 
> Many thanks to [darkmagess](https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkmagess/pseuds/darkmagess) for the beta!

“Bye, boys!” says Yennefer.

“Travel safe,” adds Triss.

“You too,” says Jaskier.

There’s an obligatory round of hugging and cheek-kissing, during which everybody pretends they are the best of friends and nobody would just as soon stab each other in the back. Round the gate house of Castel Ravello, where they’ve all been gathered for the past week at a bardic competition, other guests are congregating with their own friends and rivals to say their own goodbyes. Yennefer pulls back from hugging Geralt and links arms with Triss. Valdo Marx saunters up to join the two sorceresses.

“You two off, then?” he asks.

“Oh, yes,” says Jaskier, going in for another hug-and-cheek-kiss combination. “Goodbye, darling.”

“Bye, sweetheart, so nice to see you again,” says Marx, his smile full of daggers.

Jaskier pulls away, and Geralt puts a possessive arm around his waist. He levels a look at Marx that should make any person with sense blanch, but Marx does not take the hint.

“Will we be seeing you in Temeria for Midinviern?” Triss asks. “You know Princess Adda has been asking about you.”

Yennefer smiles a sweetly poisonous smile and wraps an arm around Triss’ shoulders.

“Oh, no, I’m afraid we’re like to be up at Oxenfurt for the whole term,” says Jaskier.

“So lovely, so will I,” says Marx.

Everyone but Triss is lying about their feelings.

“I thought we said we were going to Kaer Morhen this year?” Geralt says. He doesn’t like anything about the thought of Jaskier having to deal with Marx every day for an entire term.

Jaskier looks at him in some surprise - they had no such discussion, and he’s never asked Jaskier to accompany him before - but says, “Oh, yes, you’re right, of course, silly me!”

“Well, that sounds cold,” says Yennefer. She turned down his invitation to Kaer Morhen two years running.

“And dull,” adds Marx, who must not even have heard of Kaer Morhen before.

“Oh, don’t worry about us, we can keep ourselves warm and entertained,” purrs Jaskier, leaning into Geralt and putting one hand on his chest.

“Hmm,” agrees Geralt, turning his head so he can bury his nose in Jaskier’s hair for a brief moment.

“Well, don’t let us keep you,” says Yennefer, turning abruptly to adjust one of the straps on her horse’s saddle bags.

“Yes, I must be off myself,” sniffs Marx.

“Boys, do be careful of the weather,” says Triss, “I thought I saw signs of a storm brewing.”

The conversation has now gone on long enough that the round of hugging and cheek-kissing must seemingly be repeated. Then, thankfully, everyone goes their separate ways to their horses and their gear.

~~

“So, do you want to talk about it?” asks Jaskier, once they’re on the road. After hearing everyone else agree to take the western pass out of the mountains due to the projected snowstorm, Geralt had decided he and Jaskier would ride out the northern pass just to be contrary, but the air is growing grey and opaque and he’s already starting to regret it. “Oh, what am I saying? Of course you don’t want to talk about it. But just so you know, if you ever  _ do _ want to talk about it, I can provide a more than sympathetic ear.”

Oh, hells, why not. Jaskier has both the skill and the patience to talk Geralt through the human niceties he still finds inexplicable.

“Why do people even like that weasel?” Geralt asks. “There he was, making fast friends with all those Earls and Countesses, does he not set their teeth on edge the way he does mine?”

Jaskier looks over at him, startled. “I’m sorry, what? Who are we talking about?”

“Valdo Marx?” says Geralt, now unsure of himself. “Is he not the reason for the show we were putting on this week?” He and Jaskier are so frequently mistaken for lovers that Geralt had hardly been surprised when Jaskier suddenly started playing his devoted paramour in public, especially once he saw how many of the week’s other performances were taking place among the competition’s attendees and judges, rather than on the stage. If Geralt found he rather enjoyed having frequent armfuls (and lapfuls) of affectionate bard, that was something he could keep to himself. 

“Yennefer?” Jaskier asks slowly.

Geralt grips Roach’s reins a little tighter. “What about her?”

Jaskier takes a deep breath and his pulse quickens, but he forges ahead with what he is going to say. “The last time you saw each other, you fought - I’m guessing - and she told you she didn’t want to see you again. So, having run into you at Castel Ravello unexpectedly, she formed - or played up - a new relationship, to try to make you jealous.”

“It worked,” grumbles Geralt.

Jaskier casts him a sympathetic glance. “Yes, I thought it might,” he agrees. “But! Why on earth would you be jealous, when you’re in your own new relationship with someone who will treat you  _ ever _ so much better than Yennefer did?”

“I -” begins Geralt.

“Ah!” interrupts Jaskier. “Nobody knows it isn’t real, as long as you act it well enough. And believe me, you did a very convincing acting job.” He turns away, the tips of his ears turning pink. His heart rate hasn’t slowed. Fuck, does he know that Geralt’s feelings for him have started to run deeper than just friendship? 

“Yen’s new paramour, though, Triss? She seemed very nice,” Jaskier continues. Fuck, does he know  _ everything _ ?

“Are you suggesting I have a type?” Geralt says. It comes out more defensive than he means it to.

Jaskier coughs suspiciously. “What, beautiful sorceresses?” he asks, a teasing smile on his face.

Geralt wants to object. Beautiful sorceresses are, for some reason, drawn to him. He doesn’t exactly dislike it, but he sometimes thinks they see him primarily as a challenge or a puzzle. When he and Jaskier first met, he’s sure that’s how Jaskier saw him, too. Now, though - Jaskier is still talking.

“I only meant, I don’t like to think of her getting hurt by whatever Yennefer is trying to do to you.”

“She - we -” begins Geralt, struggling to put into words the tentative connection he thought he’d started to share with Triss in Temeria, the one he’d promptly fled because he didn’t know how to deal with it.

“Geralt,” Jaskier’s smile is much softer this time, “you don’t owe me an accounting of your romantic history. I know you’d never hurt one of your paramours on purpose - does it -” Jaskier stops suddenly, wrinkling his nose, although Argus, his gelding, keeps plodding along. “Does it smell like snow to you?”

It has been smelling like snow to Geralt for some time, but he didn’t want to say anything - he’s been hoping they can make the next town before the snow rolls in. “Since when can  _ you _ smell snow?” he asks, surprised.

“Pig shit,” says Jaskier.

“Hmm?”

“In - where I grew up, the air always smelled like pig shit before a snow storm. And we haven’t passed a farm all day.”

Geralt can wait until later to think through whether that’s also what snow on the air smells like to him. For now,

“Do you have your cold weather gear handy?” he asks Jaskier. “We’ll try to ride through to the next town, but it could start snowing before we get there.”

Jaskier pats his front saddle bags. “Cloak, cape, and mittens, all set,” he says. “What  _ is _ the next town, anyway?”

“Tre Pietre,” says Geralt, “eight miles from here. We should be there by mid-afternoon.”

Jaskier wrinkles his nose again. “Tre Pietre, never heard of it. Hope they have an inn there.”

So does Geralt. He’d initially intended for them to ride on until they reached Montaperto, which would have been near night fall, but he now suspects the snow will come in too fast and heavy for that to be a good plan. And indeed it does, soon dropping out of the sky in big, wet, heavy flakes that muffle the surrounding sounds.

The higher up the pass they climb, the more snow has already fallen. The temperature continues to drop, and there are several stops as Geralt and Jaskier each badger the other to don more winter layers. Higher up still, the trees dotting the landscape give way to bare rock. With the fallen snow, the cold wind driving fresh snow into their faces, and the late autumn sun creeping lower in the sky, it’s hard to make out any detail at all.

Roach stumbles, and Geralt leans over, stroking her mane and murmuring reassuring words in her ear.

“Geralt, can you see anything at all in this?” asks Jaskier. He’s shouting to be heard above the wind, and he has one mittened hand up to shelter his eyes. These, in turn, are the only part of him still visible beneath a fur-lined hood and a muffler.

“Not in the ordinary way, I think,” allows Geralt. It’s been so long since he received his mutations that he can’t always remember what things humans can and can’t see, but he’s fairly sure that ambient heat is not one of them. “Why, how much can you see?”

Jaskier gives him an exasperated look. “Snow,” he says, gesturing broadly to everything below the horizon, “and sky. And,” he adds, pointing his entire mittened hand at Geralt, “one grumpy arsehole on a horse.”

Geralt laughs. “Funny, that’s what I see, too.”

“Oh, ha ha.”

“I don’t think we’ve made much progress toward Tre Pietre,” Geralt admits. The pass is steeper and more treacherous than he remembered. If only he hadn’t been so keen to travel a different route than the others, to show that he wasn’t afraid of a little inclement weather. “I’ll stay on the lookout for a safe place for us to set up camp for the night.”

“What, behind a convenient boulder?” jokes Jaskier. He is, damn him, not even a little afraid. Geralt hopes this won’t be the time Jaskier’s faith in him turns out to be misplaced.

“If I recall, there are caves in these hills,” says Geralt. “Here, give me your reins.”

They resume their journey at a slower pace, Geralt leading Argus. The snow keeps falling. Roach stumbles again, then balks.

“Well, I hope there’s a cave somewhere close by,” Jaskier says, worming his hands under his cloak to stick them under his armpits.

Geralt hopes so, too. He dismounts Roach and hands the reins of both horses to Jaskier, or tries to. Jaskier sticks out an elbow under his cloak and they exchange a wordless argument, at the end of which Geralt concedes defeat and loops the reins loosely around Jaskier’s arm.

“Don’t go anywhere,” he instructs.

“Yes, I think I’ll just take the horses and strike out blindly for -” 

The rest of Jaskier’s retort is lost in a gust of howling wind as Geralt ventures off the road. A few minutes later, he’s located what looks like a promising cave and his way back to Jaskier and the horses. When he gets there, Jaskier has dismounted and is patting the horses on their noses through his thick mittens, halfway through a monologue about idiot self-sacrificing Witchers that Geralt has heard multiple times over the years.

“Come on, this way,” Geralt says, waiting to make his presence known until the last possible moment just so he can watch Jaskier jump.

Jump Jaskier does, and experiences a brief spike of adrenaline. “Oh, you horse’s arse!” he chides, even as he is cooperating with Geralt to arrange Roach and Argus’s reins so they can travel in single file down the path Geralt has stamped out. “No, I take that back, that was an insult to Roach and Argus, who both have perfectly lovely backsides -”

“You’re welcome to make your own way to Tre Pietre,” Geralt tells him.

“Yes, I rather think I shall,” huffs Jaskier, even though they both know he has no intention of doing so.

The horses are initially wary of being led into the cave, but after a brief narrow passage, it opens out into a spacious expanse lit by phosphorescent mushrooms. Jaskier gasps, looking around at their shelter for the night.

“It’s beautiful,” he breathes. He turns around in a slow circle, stripping off his mittens and hood, before stopping abruptly to look at Geralt. “Hold on, it’s not poisonous, is it?”

Geralt rolls his eyes at him. “Would I have brought us in here if it was?”

“Dunno,” teases Jaskier, continuing to shed outer layers, “you might still be trying to get rid of me.”

“You are sort of annoyingly persistent,” Geralt agrees, pulling off his own cloak. “Like a wart.”

“Oi!” says Jaskier.

~~

Jaskier usually does help Geralt set up their camp. But it was his earnings that paid for the inn they’d been staying in for the last week, and the cave really is rather unusually beautiful, and it is definitely Geralt’s fault that they’re here at all, instead of traveling safely and snow-free along the western pass. So he doesn’t mind unloading the horses, brushing them down, and getting the bed rolls set up while Jaskier wanders the cave, gazing around at the ambient purple glow and muttering snippets of poetry to himself. He really only has half an ear open - he hadn’t sensed any monsters when he scouted earlier, and the only passages further back into the cave system would require actual effort and not just aimless meandering to enter. So he’s alarmed when Jaskier’s regular musings are interrupted by,

“Augh! Fuck!” followed by a splashing sound. “Augh!”

“Jaskier!” shouts Geralt, dropping the sticks he had been piling to make a fire and taking off in the direction of the noise.

“Oh, bollocks, my best travelling doublet,” Jaskier continues. Given the source, this is not a sign that he is not in some kind of mortal peril.

Geralt comes skidding down the incline at the back of the cave to find Jaskier sitting chest-deep in a pool of water. He looks up at Geralt and smiles sheepishly.

“I found a hot spring?” he says.

“Stop fucking around in there and come help at camp,” says Geralt, much more relieved than truly angry. “It’s your turn to make dinner.”

“Oh, that’s nice,” grumbles Jaskier, but he accepts Geralt’s proffered hand and allows himself to be pulled out of the water.

Over dinner, which Jaskier eats while wearing a shirt, braies, and a blanket, he quizzes Geralt about the hot spring. Geralt tries to answer without getting too distracted by the broad expanse of hairy chest Jaskier is - probably inadvertently - showing off.

“Do you think it’s poisonous, or dangerous, or anything like that?”

“No.”

“Not going to give me blisters, or boils, or a rash?”

“No.”

“Not going to make any of my -” Jaskier waggles his hand in some sort of vague illustration, “ -bits fall off?”

Geralt snorts. “Jaskier, it’s just a hot spring.” 

“So you think it would be safe to -”

“To what?”

“Oh, sit in it on purpose?” says Jaskier.

“Well, I certainly mean to,” Geralt tells him.

Jaskier pauses, looking as though he’s just bitten into a lemon. “You - the nerve! -”

~~

As they’re sliding into the hot spring after dinner, Geralt says, “I’m sorry.”

“What - why?” asks Jaskier. He had been relaxing back against the rock wall, giving Geralt an enticing view of his long neck, but now he sits up straight, eyes wide and alert. Geralt prods Jaskier’s thigh with his toe to let him know it’s nothing life-threatening, but also that it’s not just more of the joking they’ve been trading all day.

“I should have taken us out the western pass with everyone else,” he says. “We could have been safe in some inn in Montalbino by now instead.”

“Mm, yes, snowed in with all of our exes while we keep up the pretense of being each other’s paramours,” agrees Jaskier, “such an appealing prospect.”

Geralt, stung, says, “I thought you liked pretending.” He, himself, certainly likes it more than he should.

Jaskier looks away, a flush rising in his cheeks that has nothing to do with the heat of the pool. “I don’t exactly enjoy  _ pretending _ ,” he says, “as I’m sure you can tell.”

Geralt sorts through Jaskier’s meaning and comes up with an answer he hadn’t been expecting. He’s long since come to treat Geralt as an individual and not a curiosity, but it hadn’t occurred to Geralt that the heightened arousal he always smells and senses on Jaskier is for him, specifically, considering how many other people Jaskier is always flirting with.

“You’d rather it was real.”

Jaskier laughs softly, still looking away. “Yes, I’d rather it was real.”

“So would I,” says Geralt. Perhaps too quickly, but he’s thinking of the times over the last week when Jaskier put a hand on the small of his back while asking if there was anything he could get him from the tavern. The times when Jaskier linked arms with him to speak close in his ear about the fine points of some competitor’s performance. The times when he leaned his head on Geralt’s shoulder as minstrels and troubadours performed around a fire under a clear night sky.

Jaskier looks at him sidelong. “Do you mean that? Or are you - just using this as an excuse to not think about Yennefer?”

Geralt opens his mouth to try to answer, but Jaskier keeps talking. “Because, yes, I did enjoy pretending to be paramours this last week, perhaps a little too much, but the truth is, you’re my best friend above all else. And if I’m a little too eager to jump into your bedroll so soon after the last time you saw her, and then we get to Kaer Morhen, assuming that offer was even genuine, by the way, and you change your mind about how real you want it to be, where will we be then?”

Geralt closes his mouth. There’s not much he can say to argue against any of that.

Later as they’re lying in their separate bedrolls, Geralt turns over everything they talked about that evening in his mind. Back in Castel Ravello, he  _ had _ really intended the invitation to Kaer Morhen as genuine, even if it had been spur of the moment. But now he’s second-guessing himself. Of course Jaskier is a very attractive man, and of course it’s appealing to find a bedmate who’s interested in him as a person and not just as a trophy of some sort. But what if Geralt is getting ahead of himself? What if he’s mistaking his feelings for Jaskier for something more than they are, simply because Jaskier was there for him when Yennefer was not? It’s a long time before he falls asleep, and, judging from Jaskier’s restless tossing and turning, sleep is just as elusive for him.

**Author's Note:**

> Many of my fics have at least some element of autobiography to them, and you’d be excused for thinking this one had something to do with me working out some of my feels from past relationships. In fact, this fic is inspired by that time my entire SCA Kingdom found out the hard way, twice in one summer, that when Mother Nature decides to keep you on one side of the mountains, you will not be crossing the mountains that day.
> 
> Visit me on [tumblr](https://ladivvinatravestia.tumblr.com), where my ask box is always open!


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